Food Allergy Hysteria Is Nuts

Peanut allergy can be a life-long allergy affecting about 2 percent of the population. Peanut allergy is the most common cause of death due to foods, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.Credit: iikozen, stock.xchng

Anyone who packs Junior's lunch has by now heard that peanuts are
often a no-no. In fact in many schools, peanut butter and nuts of all
kind are all prohibited. Even home-baked goods are banned for fear they
might contain traces of nuts.

The hysteria itself is nuts, and in fact the bans may worsen the very problem they aim to address, Nicolas Christakis from Harvard Medical School argues today in BMJ Online, published by the British Medical Journal.

"Measures to control nuts are instead making things worse in a cycle of over-reaction
and increasing sensitization," Christakis writes. He calls the
prohibitions part of a "mass psychogenic illness" (what used to be
epidemic hysteria) "involving otherwise healthy people in a cascade of
anxiety."

Growing problem

Among children and teenagers, food or digestive allergies increased
18 percent between 1997 and 2007, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention announced in October. Roughly 4 percent of the U.S.
population now suffers some food allergy. Most outgrow these by
adulthood.

Nobody knows why the number is growing, but some researchers
speculate that as other threats to the human immune system are removed
from the playing field by antibacterial soap and other modern
techniques, the immune system needs something to do, so it attacks the
offbeat proteins in peanuts and other foods that many people are known
to be sensitive to. In a nutshell, as explained in an article in The New York Times this week, the latent potential for a particular allergen becomes manifest, the thinking goes.

"We’ve developed a cleanlier lifestyle, and our bodies no longer
need to fight germs as much as they did in the past," Marc McMorris, a
pediatric allergist at the University of Michigan Health System, said
last year. "As a result, the immune system has shifted away from
fighting infection to developing more allergic tendencies."

School charade

Meanwhile, the efforts to make schools nut-free and therefore safe is a charade, Christakis says.

For starters, he calls it a gross over-reaction to the magnitude of
the threat. About 3.3 million Americans are allergic to nuts, according
to the CDC. More are allergic to other foods,
from milk to wheat; about 6.9 million are allergic to seafood. Serious
allergic reactions to foods — all foods — cause roughly 2,000
hospitalizations a year and about 150 deaths among children and adults
combined.

Christakis compares this to automobiles, which kill some 45,000 a
year, and sports, which send about 10,000 children to hospitals each
year with traumatic brain injury. Nobody is clamoring to ban cars or
sports, he points out.

Also, "there is no scientific evidence that the particular
restrictions being imposed are effective or that they warrant the costs
incurred," Christakis points out.

Making matters worse

There is evidence, however, that avoiding nuts makes children
ultimately more likely to be allergic to them. A study of 10,000
children in the UK, reported earlier this year in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found that early exposure to peanuts reduces the risk of peanut allergies.

"The wholesale avoidance of nuts contributes to the problem by
resulting in children who, lacking exposure to nuts, are actually
sensitized to them," Christakis said.

He acknowledges that nut allergies can be serious, and that
"reasonable accommodation" should be made for those few children known
to have serious allergies.

However, "well intentioned efforts to reduce exposure to nuts
actually fan the flames, since they signal to parents that nuts are a
clear and present danger," he writes. "This encourages more parents to
worry, which fuels the epidemic. It also encourages more parents to
have their children tested, thus detecting mild and meaningless
'allergies' to nuts. And this encourages still more avoidance of nuts,
leading to still more sensitization."

This article is from the LiveScience Water Cooler: What people are talking about in the world of science and beyond.

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Author Bio

Robert Roy Britt

Rob was a writer and editor at Space.com starting in 1999. He served as managing editor of Live Science at its launch in 2004. He is now Chief Content Officer overseeing media properties for the sites’ parent company, Purch. Prior to joining the company, Rob was an editor at The Star-Ledger in New Jersey, and in 1998 he was founder and editor of the science news website ExploreZone. He has a journalism degree from Humboldt State University in California.